You guys are good. Definitely 5.5 level or higher.
Anyway, Matt, are you going to upload videos when Stanford comes to town on April 4th weekend ? That should be a great match with the Bruins. Cardinal almost beat them at home last time.

I don't know, man, you're handling his 1st serves pathetically easy -- I mean, you were ALL OVER his first serves. You were putting the returns in great areas of the court, so it looked like you didn't have any trouble at all dealing with them.

If he was serving closer to 100 mph, then you probably wouldn't have many opportunities to get "quality" returns in. There's a big difference between "just getting it back", and "having options".

Any player that has plenty of service return options against a 100 mph first serve, is a way better player than a 4.5 IMO.

Great, you are the best. When i went to fast serve competition years ago, i used to string with all Natural gut and i was surprised how easy it was to generate more power on the serves. I was easily pumping it up to 100 mph. and i usually have to kill my arm to get a few up in that range....LOL

I feel that natural gut is a bit more lively and forgiving on the arm than polyester. With a poly, you really have to swing fast to generate all the pop, but the ball tends to fly more with synthetics or natural guy IMO.

Speaking of Stanford, apparently one of their players, Trey Strobel, was a natural rightie who switched to lefty to take advantage of the lefty serve. Apparently the switch was quite a struggle but it worked and he rose to #1 in the nation in his age group in his early teens, thanks to his serve. I'd be curious to see if his serve is still a big weapon now.

Speaking of Stanford, apparently one of their players, Trey Strobel, was a natural rightie who switched to lefty to take advantage of the lefty serve. Apparently the switch was quite a struggle but it worked and he rose to #1 in the nation in his age group in his early teens, thanks to his serve. I'd be curious to see if his serve is still a big weapon now.

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Yes it is HUGE. it is one of his main weapons. but he seem to lack consistency. it looks like he doesn't move as well as some of the natural movers. but he is improving every week and will be a great asset to the team

I'm not familiar with the other aspects of his game either. I only heard of him from the Serve Doctor's instructional video. At first I thought he only switched his serve, but he actually switched his whole game to lefty. Sounds pretty extreme to me. I'm glad it's working out for him.

Using this motion the racket undergoes a windshield-wiper followthrough (like a modern forehand), and Gasquet was able to make that backhand kick up at his opponent's head height.

The 'whirlwind backhand' motion in that link shows how to take maximum advantage of the increased ROM the 1hbh has over the 2hbh, which can give it more topspin compared to the 2hbh.

Even Almagro (who has the pro backhand that most resembles your own) does this motion extensively on higher balls and when he's trying to put more spin on the ball. Federer does it as well, as does Wawrinka, but with a much former wrist.

Some 1hbh players use this motion very rarely (Tommy Haas, for example), so I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with your backhand but you have said yourself that you use it as a rallying stroke and do not/cannot attack with it. You have also said you drop the ball short when people hit high to it.

Trying this may solve these problems and take your backhand to the 'next level'.

Yes tennis_hack I have experimented with more extreme grips and using more of a whip like wind-shield wiper backhand in the past and it works when I try to hit a heavy, high looper. It's definitely very effective and I'll try to incorporate it more into my game. You can generate massive rpm and racket head speed to hit huge and heavy rollers too. I definitely like Almagro's game and see that he does resemble mine quite a bit! If I could get my groundies up to his level and also my serve, I could definitely be a pretty solid player.

Wow, that one high backhand volley Alex hit, ......bad bad bad....
Seems he is hitting into your body on first serves a lot, you seemingly standing IN to return his serves.
He's got the Sampras mope a dope going really well....
I don't know Alex, but he seems to avoid hitting wide serves to you, but your return is superlative on both sides, and you're not afraid to hit the returns.

Wow, that one high backhand volley Alex hit, ......bad bad bad....
Seems he is hitting into your body on first serves a lot, you seemingly standing IN to return his serves.
He's got the Sampras mope a dope going really well....
I don't know Alex, but he seems to avoid hitting wide serves to you, but your return is superlative on both sides, and you're not afraid to hit the returns.

Don't follow college tennis, but I have watched the Cal Women's team practice. Nice 100mph top/slice first serves.
I'm only commenting about Alex off your vids, don't know him, don't know of him. He seems really unhappy, like he should be playing someone else, and like he's forced to play practice matches.

I just played this guy in mixed at spring invitational. I know people overrate serve speeds on this site, but I think you guys are under rating his serve. His flat first serves get to 100 and and a little higher. He has a pretty good kick first serve too. His second serve was alright. I played really good vs him for the most part, but my parter had a really bad time compared to their girl. Was a lot of fun. Maybe he would remember the match versus new mexico state Matt.

I just played this guy in mixed at spring invitational. I know people overrate serve speeds on this site, but I think you guys are under rating his serve. His flat first serves get to 100 and and a little higher. He has a pretty good kick first serve too. His second serve was alright. I played really good vs him for the most part, but my parter had a really bad time compared to their girl. Was a lot of fun. Maybe he would remember the match versus new mexico state Matt.

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I do really wish I went to Nationals now but I am at LA Hacks haha. I didn't qualify, but I think I could usually beat Kaiser and Daniel Liu in singles but not Ishaan and Greg. All of them play a lot better than me in doubles though so I didn't get selected.

I do really wish I went to Nationals now but I am at LA Hacks haha. I didn't qualify, but I think I could usually beat Kaiser and Daniel Liu in singles but not Ishaan and Greg. All of them play a lot better than me in doubles though so I didn't get selected.

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Ya it would have been fun! Our singles guy beat Greg 6-3. It was a pretty good match. Your girls were really good though.

Yeah I want to go next year if possible. Are you guys still in the tourney?

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We just got back a bit ago, and we had a rough pool. We had Oregon, Wisconsin, and UCLA. It was a lot of fun though. We probably would not have won or made top 4, but we didn't play our best people. We just wanted to get everybody we could playing time and have fun.

We lost to Oregon by a game, Wisconsin by a few games, and UCLA by less than ten.

I saw UCLA ended up winning though. Our team felt pretty good because all of our matches were close with them.

Congrats though! You guys have an automatic bid to nationals next year.

The problem is that I don't have my dad's Panasonic camcorder and I had to record using my crappy cell phone, and I am having trouble using the Capture app on my iPad to upload. The thing is, I have video footage of Murray, Federer, Nadal, that I really want to upload in 20 minute videos, but iPad Capture isn't uploading it. Any fixes?

The problem is that I don't have my dad's Panasonic camcorder and I had to record using my crappy cell phone.

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No problem. Thanks for the video, they were great as usual especially on Cellphone.. lol

Are you guys going to Ojai this year. Those guys don't have a lot of coverage online or otherwise til the final. even then, it is shortened garbage.
You should record it with cam and sell it to the networks.

I really want to go to Ojai because I had great memories of the place last year, but with school unfortunately it doesn't seem likely. Maybe I can ask my coach to film it since he goes up to Ojai every year.